ANOMALY //>

To hell and back!
Drag Me To Hell [2009]
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long
Director: Sam Raimi
3.5/5

I've been anticipating this for a while. I was glad to see it getting strong reviews on it's release and it only made me more excited to see it.
The storyline is pretty straight forward: A young girl who works at a bank denies an ugly old woman an extension on her mortgage payment. Unfortunately for the young girl [who's name i don't remember, i think it was Kristine] the old woman is actually a witch....or something, and in a fit of anger, the old woman puts a curse on the girl for not helping her. The girl has 3 days before an evil spirit comes for her soul. She sets out to try and put an end to the curse, which in turn brings her face to face with a hooved demon, slimy corpse mouths rubbing on her face, flies up her nose and a whole lot of other fugly ass shit!

This turned out to be a lot funnier than i expected. It wasn't very scary unfortunately, but in typical Sam Raimi style, it was overly gross, silly and really enjoyable. I just can't believe how gross it was at times, lol! i was laughing so hard! You'll be cringing at a few scenes for sure.

One thing Sam is known for is his GREAT use of sound in his films, and this was FULL of them! He has a crazy imagination as well, some of the scenes were shot really well. The opening scenes before the credits were loud and visually very strong and the "curse" scene had some great camera work in it too. He has a really strong eye for dynamic direction, it's really enticing to the eyes.

I could recommend this to pretty much anyone, the balance of humor and horror would make it more appealing to a broader audience imo. You'll need to see it with a sense of humor though. If you're expecting a serious and slow burning dark horror film, you'll be disappointed. It's cartoony and over the top, and it makes no apologies for it, and that's what i liked about it. I also liked that they didn't cop out with the ending. It was a twist i THOUGHT i might see coming, but that didn't matter, i still liked the direction the final scene went in anyway.
I give credit to Alison Loham in this too, she took a very simple role and made her character really likeable. You actually gave a shit about her, and that doesn't happen a lot in horror films.

I'm tempted to give it a 4/5, and i think i will with another viewing. But for now, it's a 3.5.

See it!